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Pizzaiolo, that wonderful Italian restaurant in the Temescal District in Oakland, is hosting a community outreach dinner called Sunday Soup Supper this Sunday, April 26. Proceeds will benefit YEAH! (Youth Emergency Assistance Hostel), which is a local shelter.

Pizzaiolo hopes to serve “diverse segments of our neighborhood population together to eat delicious soup and bread.” Sounds good to me. Diners will pay on a sliding scale from $0 – $10. So if you can pay more, you do, and if you can’t, that’s okay too. The produce will mostly be donated by local farmers who regularly supply the Pizzaiolo kitchen.

Artichokes are a deceptive vegetable. Their prickly and tough exterior makes them look not only inedible, but a bit dangerous to handle. Underneath those sharp and rough leaves, however, is a sweet and tender treat that is worth excavating. Left alone on the stalk, the artichoke morphs into an elaborate flower that looks a bit like a peacock with purple plumes. I often grow them in my side yard and leave the later harvest to flower because they are so pretty. If you pick them early enough, however, or purchase them at the farmer’s market or store (and you can find them everywhere this time of year) you get something that is both earthy and sweet. Such a great way to start spring.

My mother has always made giant stuffed artichokes for Easter dinner. Her large full chokes are truly gorgeous to behold — like enormous desert flowers filled with bread crumb pollen — and even more delightful to eat. But because I am lazy, I rarely make this dish. Filling each leaf of an artichoke seems a tedious task. And, although I love to spend long dinners leisurely making my way through a giant artichoke, my children and husband don’t have the patience to slowly nibble the meat from the edge of each leaf. I therefore came up with a compromise recipe: keep the stuffing, but ditch the tiresome preparation and elongated eating period. This makes everyone happy.

In my version, I use medium-sized artichokes, trimming off all the hard outer leaves and chopping off the top. I cook them halfway in a pot of water and then finish them off on the grill. Trimmed and halved, you’re left with the perfect receptacle for a dollop of stuffing with the added bonus that almost the entire vegetable is now edible.

Like my mother, I use bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese and parsley in my stuffing, but I’ve also added a few other ingredients. Because the intense heat of the grill caramelizes the natural sugars of the artichoke, I wanted to include a salty component to the stuffing. I have therefore added cooked pancetta to the mix, which really helps highlight the vegetable’s natural sweet flavors, along with a little mint to liven things up.

Grilling is the easy part. Just lay the artichokes leaf-side down on indirect heat and cover for about 20 minutes. I tried flipping a few over and the stuffing held in all but one. That said, they turn out wonderfully if you just leave them alone as well. The final product is something you can eat with normal bites. No more gnawing off edges for impatient kids and husbands, although plenty of sweet artichoke flavor for everyone.

Grilled Stuffed Artichokes

Makes: 16 artichoke halves

Ingredients:

8 medium artichokes

2 lemons

½ cup fresh bread crumbs

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼ cup pancetta or bacon

2 garlic cloves

2 Tbsp chopped Italian parsley

1 Tbsp chopped mint

6 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

2 Tbsp water or white wine

Dash of salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Wash the artichokes and then trim off the top prickly edges, about 1/2-inch from the top down.

2. Fill a large pot ¾ full with water and squeeze the juice from one lemon into the pot, tossing in the actual squeezed lemon at the end. Add 1 Tbsp salt to the water.

3. Remove the outer leaves of the artichoke until you get to the lighter and more tender underleaves.

4. One by one, slice the artichokes in half and core out the furry part above the heart. Place each one in the pot of water when you are done. Be sure to place each artichoke half in the water as soon as you have finished cutting and trimming it, or else it will start to brown in the air.

5. Once all the chokes are trimmed, halved and defurred, bring the covered pot of water to a boil.

6. Turn off the heat once you gain a rapid boil and then let the artichokes sit in the covered pot for 5-7 minutes.

7. Remove the artichokes from the water and drain. Press a paper towel against them to try to gently press out any excess water.

8. Place the artichokes in a large baking pan, cut side up, and drizzle 3 tablespoons of oil on top along with the zest of your remaining lemon as well as that lemon’s juice. Flip the artichokes over, and then cover and refrigerate the pan until ready to use. You can make these up to a day ahead of time.

9. About a half hour before you’re ready to grill, cut the pancetta or bacon into small cubes and sauté with the garlic in 1 Tbsp olive oil until crispy.

10. Place your bread crumbs, cooked pancetta and garlic, parsley, mint, remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and water or white wine in a food processor along with a dash of salt and pepper. Pulse until everything is thoroughly chopped and combined.

11. Turn the artichokes over so they are once again cut-side up and gently press a small mound of stuffing into each cavity. Top with a sprinkle of kosher or sea salt.

12. Grill each artichoke on indirect heat for about 20 minutes, or until ready.

Note: For fresh bread crumbs, just place two slices of bread (I use the ends) in a food processor and pulse about ten times.

This weekend is Easter, so in addition to coloring eggs and having our annual Easter egg hunt, I wanted to make a nice loaf of Easter bread. I had a problem, however. I couldn’t figure out which type of holiday bread to make. Many cultures have breads that are traditionally served during Lent and the Easter holidays. One of the most famous is the Greek Easter Bread (called tsouréki), which is sometimes made with spices — such as allspice, cinnamon or cloves — or vanilla and/or citrus zest. Most recipes use mastícha, which is a Greek spice that can be found in specialty or gourmet stores. Hot cross buns are another type of traditional Easter bread and often have currents, raisins or nuts, as well as spices such as cinnamon. They are topped with a cross of icing and are a traditional English holiday bun.

My mother made a Greek-style Easter bread when I was a kid, and I always thought it was the perfect accompaniment to hard boiled eggs, jelly beans, and chocolate bunnies. I made this type of bread once or twice, but since having children, have relied on serving the lovely hot cross buns made at La Farine each Easter morning. Now that my daughters are a little older, however, I wanted to revive my mother’s tradition of making home-made Easter bread.

After a childhood eating traditional Greek Easter bread during Lent, followed by an adulthood eating hot cross buns, I had a case of culinary confusion once I decided to bake something myself. Luckily, my mom is visiting right now, so we put our heads together and came up with our own creation yesterday. It is reminiscent of the traditional Greek Easter bread in that it uses eggs and is airy and light. For sweetness, I added a sugar glaze similar to that found on hot cross buns. Because I was creating my own recipe, I decided to make just a simple yeasted egg dough, but am open to adding lemon zest and spices in the future. We cut the dough into three pieces and then braided it in a circle and decorated it with red Easter eggs, which is a tradition in Greece. The result was a slightly sweet light bread with a lemony glaze that goes perfect with coffee and eggs. I can’t wait to dig in Sunday morning.

Preparation:
1. In a large mixing bowl, combine the water, sugar and yeast. Let stand for at least five minutes or until it foams (see picture). Note: If you are using your stand-alone mixer to make the bread, use the mixer bowl.

2. Heat the milk in a pot on low until it’s warm.
3. Mix the milk, eggs, oil and salt in a medium bowl.
4. Add the egg mixture to the yeast mixture and stir.
5. Stir in four cups of flour. If using a mixer, such as a KitchenAid, use the dough hook.
6. Slowly mix in about two more cups of the remaining flour, or until the dough no longer sticks to the sides of the bowl. Note: the dough should still look glossy.
7. Lay the dough out on a wooden cutting board or counter top dusted with flour.
8. Knead the dough, adding in the last cup of flour if the dough gets too sticky, until it is pliable.
9. Put dough in an oiled bowl and cover with a piece of oiled plastic wrap. Let it rise for an hour or two, or until it doubles in size.
10. Punch dough down and divide it into three equal pieces, stretching and lengthening each piece so they are about two-feet long.
11. Braid the pieces together in a circle, joining the ends.
12. Nestle five of the dyed eggs into the dough (yes — you bake the bread with the dyed hard-boiled eggs in it.)

13. Cover with the oiled plastic wrap for 30 – 60 minutes, or until it rises further.
14. Bake the bread at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until it is golden brown and cooked throughout. Note: the bread only took 20 minutes in my convection oven.
15. Remove bread from the oven and place it on a serving dish.
16. In a medium bowl, mix one cup of the powdered sugar with 1 Tbsp of the lemon juice and 1 Tbsp of milk. It should be the texture of soupy toothpaste.
17. Spread the glaze onto the bread with a pastry brush.
18. Let the bread cool for a few minutes with the glaze and then make another batch of the glaze and recoat the bread.

Some of you may have read my post last week about Google dining. I was fortunate enough to be asked to have lunch on the Google campus, and while I was there, Google was incredibly accommodating. They set up a time for me to interview Scott Giambastiani, one of their Executive Chefs, and tour some of the Google cafés. But what was the food like? Eclectic, fresh, and small. Let me explain.

When I first walked onto the Google campus, I have to admit my expectations were pretty high. My friends Carol and Dan had filled me with stories of wonderful lunches they’d had there, including one day where they were met with heaping trays full of shucked oysters, buffet tables stacked with cracked crab, and mountains of shrimp. Yet although I didn’t find a “Seafood Friday Extravaganza,” as Dan and Carol dubbed that wonderful lunch they had a while back, I still had a more than decent meal and was impressed with the varied selection of dishes available and the quality of ingredients, not to mention the sheer abundance of food.

After sitting at a table outside with Scott, we journeyed inside the Big Table café for lunch. Now there seem to be two types of cafés at Google: themed and cafeteria style. Big Table is the latter. It’s a general all purpose eating facility that offers a varied menu and doesn’t really cater to any particular taste. Unlike Google’s Mexican taqueria or Spanish tapas café, Big Table has a diverse array of foods available for every taste.

Before I discuss the actual food, I should mention that Google has a small-plate philosophy. There are no heaping portions at Google. Sure they offer burgers and fries (albeit grass-fed beef burgers with organic potato fries), but the burgers come as small sliders and the fries are on proportionally-sized plates. The idea is for people to try a variety of dishes when eating, instead of gorging themselves on only one or two large items. The chefs are also hoping diners will eat a more varied diet. It seemed that in the midst of all the Google plenty, the chefs themselves advocate an aura of restraint: take what you need; include some vegetables to go with your meat; have an apple or banana; and try something you’ve never eaten before.

The first thing I noticed after getting my tray and silverware was a sushi bar to my left. Growing up in the sticks outside of San Diego, I didn’t even try sushi until I was in college, but when I did, I immediately fell in love. I therefore made a beeline to the sushi queue. While I waited for my turn, I noticed the sushi chef hard at work, cutting up pieces of salmon and eel to create fresh rolls. He seemed just as adept at his job as the guy behind the counter at my local sushi restaurant. Everything seemed to be made on the spot and I was impressed that Big Table hadn’t resorted to making a bunch of rolls earlier in the day so they’d have a stock on hand for the lunch rush. All the rolls seemed to be made fresh, right where the crowds could watch as they grabbed their small plates. Next to the sushi counter was a selection of regular and low-sodium soy sauce, along with wasabi and what looked (and tasted) like homemade pickled ginger.

After leaving the Sushi counter, the world was literally my oyster. Laid out before me were barbecued pork sliders and a variety of salads to go with them, Indian curries, pizzas, Asian rolls, calamari, meat-stuffed artichokes with a breaded topping, an enormous salad bar, soups, and other items that I just passed by in the whirlwind of food. I grabbed items here and there, completely skipping the curries as the line was outrageously long and headed to the beverage area.

Normally the drinks in a cafeteria aren’t remarkable, but of course at Google, even beverages get their moment in the sun. There seemed to be two main drink areas that on first glance seemed de rigueur, but not for long. Alongside the iced tea and apple juice sat a vat of lovely organic raspberry tea that was refreshing and sweet without being cloying, as juice teas often are. The soda fountain, meanwhile, was also unique. Instead of the normal “Coke,” “Pepsi,” and “A&W,” there was “Cola,” “Diet Cola,” “Root Beer” and so on, but with the clever inclusion of a short ingredients list for each. So instead of just grabbing a Coke, you were faced with the words “Sweetened with Cane Sugar” beneath, reminding you that your beverage of choice is laden with sucrose, although not the normal Beelzebub corn syrup.

Okay, now I’m actually going to tell you how the food tasted.

The sushi was great. The fish tasted fresh and the rice was sticky but not gummy. My friend Carol said she got a tough piece of salmon in her roll, but my salmon and eel were both tender and delicious. The barbecued pork sliders were decent, but I have to admit they weren’t the best, or even great. This may be due to the fact that I like my barbecued pork laden in a tangy cider vinegar sauce and these had a sweet barbecue topping, but they were still good and I ate my entire sandwich. The stuffed artichokes were the least desirable item on my plate. The beef inside was just too dense and overwhelmed the sweet meat of the vegetable, and the tomato sauce on top was nothing of note and also detracted from the flavors of the dish. The pizza was better than your standard fare — cheesy and with a crisp crust — but not in the same league as what you’d find at Pizzeria Delfina or Pizzaiolo.

What impressed me most on my plate were the salads. The greens were fresh and crisp, the beets were sweet and earthy, the carrots perfectly blanched, and the dressings subtle in taste. Overall, I would rate the food as equivalent to what you would find in a two-star restaurant. That said, it was quite good for a workplace café. Dan and Carol both insisted they have often had better meals at Google, so maybe I was just there on an off day. Whatever the case, if my meal was the norm, those Googlers are pretty lucky to get such a variety of organic and freshly-prepared food for free. If I worked at Google, I would happily eat at Big Table or its equivalent every day with a big smile on my face.

After we were done eating, Carol and I perused the dessert area, but didn’t see anything too enticing. I was hoping to find a good cookie, but as none were available, I tried the brownie which had an odd flavor (I thought maybe it had peanut butter in it, but Carol thought it was made of carob). I was a little surprised the dessert at Big Table was lackluster as we had already enjoyed some wonderful mini-banana cream tarts before lunch while touring another café. The tarts’ crusts were flaky and crisp and the cream filling had a sweet banana flavor with a luscious texture. Everything a mini tart should be.

On the way out, Carol and I stopped by Slice, the smoothie bar. She got a Mangolicious while I asked for a Banana Split. Behind the counter, a café worker whipped up smoothies and poured them into glasses for anyone interested. The mango drink had a bright and fruity mango taste, while my smoothie had fresh coconut and chocolate flavors to accent the bananas. Both were lip smacking.

In each café, the focus really did seem to be on using local and organic foods that are in season, and the cleanup was equally green. Each restaurant has an area where you return your trays, compost your compostables, recycle your recyclables, and plant your reusable plates and silverware on a conveyor belt to be washed in the back. I also noticed the trash seemed relatively empty, which was impressive given the number of people having lunch at the café where we dined.

My overall impression was that serving that many people is a huge undertaking, yet everything seemed to run with a smooth efficiency. I was happy to see an overall emphasis on healthy eating and the choice to serve organic and local foods didn’t seem like a sham. Most importantly, the food was fresh and tasty. So if you’re thinking of applying for a job at Google, put some extra effort into your resume. The banana cream tarts are worth it.

For years I have heard people wax poetic about the food at Google. The rumors seemed unbelievable: fresh organic, sustainable and locally grown foods prepared under the tutelage of a five-star chef. Oh, and did I mention it’s all free? Well, free if you work there. As if those stock options weren’t sufficient. It’s enough to make a freelance editor and writer cry.

So when a friend of mine who works for Google asked me join him for lunch one day, I jumped at the chance. I wanted to see for myself how the food operation at Google worked, and, more than that, if the hype lived up to the reality.

I had my own employee on-site dining experience years ago, when I was just out of college and worked as an assistant in the script development department at Walt Disney Studios. I quit after a year as I wasn’t up to swimming with sharks, but while I was there, I was able to benefit from a fairly good company commissary. It was run by Marriott Foods and although it wasn’t a five-star restaurant, it had a decent burger, a nice daily fish entrée, a solid deli, and breakfast at reasonable prices. Yet while I and the other underlings were dining at picnic tables outside, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the directors, agents and stars were all on the upper floors of the Team Disney building. In a circular dining room with views of, as Johnny Carson used to say, beautiful downtown Burbank, the mucky mucks would eat food prepared by a noted chef on china plates that had little Mickey Mouse ears around the edges. So as I walked onto the Google campus, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was downstairs-picnic-table dining for the masses and Mickey-Mouse-china dining for the brass? Just how good is the food for the everyday workaday engineer at Google?

Through my Google friend Dan, I set up an appointment with Scott Giambastiani, one of seven Executive Chefs at Google, and we arranged a time to meet. When I googled Scott from my home computer, I realized that if he was any indication of this company’s seriousness about food, I was in for a nice lunch. Scott was trained at the California Culinary Academy and then interned at The Lark Creek Inn (a restaurant I have loved for years). He has worked with Gary Danko at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco, and then spent 9 years at Viognier in San Mateo. He left in 2006 to go to Google and seems quite happy with his choice. I had a great conversation with Scott. He was very welcoming and happy to share with me the ins and outs of Google dining, give me the skinny on some Google food legends, and detail how the dining operations are run.

Once I was on the Google campus, I was happy to see that dining at Google isn’t like dining at Disney. Google offers 18 cafés for their employees, which includes one at the San Francisco campus and one in San Bruno. There is no upstairs dining for the elite and outside dining for regular employees. It all seemed pretty egalitarian.

The many cafés at Google are run by individual vendors who report to Google. Chefs like Scott act as ambassadors for Google and make sure all the cafés offer equivalent quality and value. As in many dining establishments, the menus are created daily and are dependent on what foods are available that day from the many farms and vendors they use. Local farms, such as Happy Boy, drop off food daily and the meals are then prepared on site. Other items, such as rolls and pastries, are purchased from local vendors and quality-checked by Google’s chefs.

In addition to its many cafés, Google has set up micro-kitchens throughout their offices. These are stocked with fresh coffee and often espresso machines, sandwiches, Naked Juice, cashews, dried fruit, It’s It cookies, and a variety of sodas and chips. As with the cafés, each kitchen is different. Although they all offer the same basic items, 20% of each kitchen’s offerings are unique to that kitchen and are chosen to meet the demographics of a specific office area, which are determined through surveys. So, as you might guess, the kitchens on floors with sales and marketing people have more raw nuts and the engineers want more chips.

When I walked through a few buildings, there seemed to be a kitchen around every corner. When I asked Dan about this, he said that according to Google lore, there is food within 150 feet of every office. Scott then confirmed the rumor as true. It seems that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s founders, believed no one should ever be more than 150 feet from food (a philosophy I can get behind). They therefore had their offices built with numerous kitchens so workers could easily pop over for a quick bite while never needing to leave the near vicinity. I have to say that although this seems pretty convenient to the workers, I’m sure Google is getting a nice return on the fact that employees don’t ever stray far from their desks. Sort of like supplying pollen at the bee hive.

The food choices at Google are very research-driven. Googlers (this is what Google calls its employees) can fill out online and paper questionnaires about the food they’re served; polls are taken; and they even have a Lego voting system in the dining areas where employees can vote through building a Lego structure using different colored blocks. The color you use says what you thought of your meal (i.e., red means “better luck next time,” yellow means “keep trying,” while green means “very good”). I couldn’t figure out how this actually worked as each dining area offers an abundance of food and the Legos didn’t seem to actually pinpoint a specific entrée, but it was interesting nonetheless.

The data Google gets from all those polls and surveys is crunched and then used to shape their food program. To satisfy the needs of their diverse population, they offer a variety of different dining venues. No Name offers a healthy vegetable-focused menu that includes raw food, while Pintxo has Spanish tapas and paella. 150 offers only local food grown within a 150-mile radius from the Google campus. There’s also a Mexican taqueria, a deli, and numerous all-purpose dining areas, like Big Table where I ate. These offer a variety of choices, including Indian food stations, pizza zones, sushi bars, and anything else you could really think of. Before leaving, my friend Carol (Dan’s wife) and I stopped off at the smoothie bar, named Slice, which was full of funky red and blue chairs and stools: quite a hip place to set up your laptop and work while drinking a free wheat grass shot.

So how was the actual food? Read Part 2 Next Thursday where I continue my review by covering the café Big Table along with the smoothie bar. In the meantime, here’s a Google recipe for Heirloom Tomato and Summer Berry Gazpacho with Goat Cheese Ice Cream that Scott gave me.

Preparation:
1. To begin this easy and delicious soup, start by making certain that all the fruits and vegetables are rinsed clean under cool running water.
2. Rough chop the first four ingredients as stated above.
3. Place the chopped vegetables, berries, verjus, club soda and brown sugar into a blender.
4. Cover and puree until smooth.
5. Adjust the seasoning with salt and cayenne to taste.
6. Next, pour the soup into a mixing bowl and stir in the chopped herbs.
7. Allow the herbs to sit in the soup refrigerated for 15-20 minutes.
8. Finally, strain the soup mixture through a fine strainer, pressing firmly with a spatula or ladle to force the pulp through the strainer.
9. Discard any pulp that remains in the strainer.
10. Add the juice of one lime to the soup.
11. Serve at once. Garnish soup with fresh berries, diced cucumber, fresh herbs and Goat Cheese Ice Cream.

Preparation:
1. In a heavy-bottomed saucepot, bring the cream and milk to a scald.
2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar and slowly pour in some of the hot cream to temper the eggs. This keeps the eggs from scrambling.
3. Pour the eggs into the cream and continue to cook for 2 to 3 minutes over medium-low heat, while constantly stirring the gently scraping the bottom of the pot with a rubber spatula.
4. Continue cooking until the mixture coats the back of a spoon and steam rises from the top.
5. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the corn syrup and goat cheese and then whisk this mixture into the cream mixture until smooth.
6. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer and chill this mixture in an ice bath.
7. Once chilled, place the ice cream base into a single serving ice cream machine and follow your manufacturer’s instructions for spinning.

This post is for my lovely cousin-in-law Beth, who is in need of an easy biscuit recipe. Resist the urge to buy Pillsbury rolls. They’re full of hydrogenated fats and have a fake butter flavor. Once you eat a real biscuit, you’ll never want the refrigerated store variety again. Real biscuits are buttery and crisp and have a flavor unmatched by anything you could buy in a store. And, once you get the hang of them they’re fast and easy to make.

Here are a few key points to remember when making biscuits:

Make sure your butter is cold. Like pie dough, you need to use chilled butter.

I recently wrote about turnovers and posted my apple turnover recipe. I love apple turnovers, but also adore cherry. Unlike apples, however, cherries are only in season for a very short time each year, from about June through July. If you want to eat cherries the rest of the year, you need to use frozen or preserved. Although cherries are amazing when fresh, and fresh cherry turnovers are beyond compare, you can make delicious cherry turnovers with some frozen cherries and jam. I also use these same ingredients when making cherry pies out of season.

Here’s the recipe. It’s easy, fast and yummy.

Cherry Turnovers

Makes: 9 turnovers

Turnover Ingredients:

1 sheet frozen puff pastry 2 cups fresh or frozen cherries

1/2 cup cherry jam or preserves

1/2 cup bown sugar

2 Tbsp flour

1 tsp lemon juice

Topping Ingredients:
1 egg scrambled
2 Tbsp white sugar

Preparation:
1. Bring puff pastry to room temperature.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
3. Place frozen cherries, jam, lemon juice and sugar in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
4. Roll out pastry dough on a lightly floured surface into a 12- by 12-inch square and then cut it into 9 equal pieces.
5. Scoop cherry mixture onto the lower half of each square, being sure not to overfill.
6. Turn the upper half of the dough over the cherry mixture and pinch the ends. If the dough doesn’t seal, you can lightly coat the edges with an egg wash and then press them down.
7. Lay the filled dough onto a baking sheet and coat each turnover with an egg wash and sprinkle with sugar.
8. Place the baking sheet in the oven for 12 – 18 minutes, or until golden brown.
9. Serve immediately or store for later use.